The best I can do is set out to plumb the depths of the challenge and change needed, show evidence, and point the way forward. We actually have an excellent guide for this: the Qumran Community that was set up around 168BC to “prepare the Way of the Lord”, whose representative finally emerged into the public realm as John the Baptist. But proving what I know of Qumran will be a bit tricky, so for now let’s look at the challenges that clearly face Christianity.
Which denomination is God’s Church?
Many of these challenge some traditional interpretation of Christianity, where the challenger’s evidence is seen as belonging to a truer way of interpreting Christ’s teachings, that were given in the context of his time, and now need applying in the context of our times. Some of these challenges may strike one as hanging on to non-essentials; yet it is only courtesy to listen to those for whom the challenge is crucial, and why they regard it as crucial.
Take for instance those groups who claim that Christians are celebrating the wrong weekday as Sabbath. Are they all right? or all wrong? do they have a point? have they fairly considered their evidence? does it really matter? do they have a really charismatic founder? gifted preachers? any really thoughtful theologians? can they still continue as separate churches but belong together with other denominations to represent the true and full “Body of Christ”?
To me, the answer to all those questions is Yes. How, one may ask, can they be “all right” and “all wrong” at the same time? Here we enter the real issue. It’s clear to me that God (or Great Spirit – or whatever name we call the Source of our Being) has been supporting at least some of the members of at least some such churches. by “support” I mean healing miracles, tremendous insights, “coincidences”, help, grace. But equally well, it’s clear to me that God has supported members of those denominations who have left them for what they saw as a good reason; God has also supported other denominations that would emphatically deny Sabbatarians, or Seventh-Day Adventists, or the Worldwide Church of God, to be bona fide Christian.
Should any be excluded?
Now let’s widen the remit. It’s clear to me that God was very much with Martin Luther who brought through the Reformation and yet did not suffer the fate of all his predecessors, of forfeiting his life or ending up with a small minority group that would be subject to persecution, or just fade away. He broke clean with what had been the universal Catholic tradition of celibacy for the clergy, and was actually very happily married. It was time. Yet his diatribes against the Jews were, by today’s standards, racist, vile, unjust.
Today there is a small but creative, blessed, and very much growing Messianic Christian movement – Jews becoming Christians but retaining their Jewish roots – and in so doing, providing insights and practices that greatly enrich traditional Christianity, correct Christian misinterpretations, and challenge Christianity itself to grow. Key prophecies for our times are emerging, from such as Jonathan Cahn: his books have to be read carefully to begin to appreciate what Spirit is up to.
And there are other churches that are not part of the “Churches Together” ecumenical movement, for which there are excellent arguments that they should be allowed membership. What about the Spiritualist Churches? the Latter-day Saints? the anthroposophical Christian Communities? has their defence really been heard?
What would Jesus say?
So let’s widen the remit further. Jesus has himself appeared to many individuals in our times, in the most extraordinary of circumstances, attended by miracles. Many belong to recognized churches; many have joined churches as a result; but some have not. Jesus has spoken to me too. How do I know? By what he said, and the effect it had on me, that I could not have invented. There is a lovely anonymous verse that runs thus:
Thou shalt know him when he comes,
Not by any din of drums,
Nor his manners, nor his airs,
Nor by any thing he wears.
Thou shalt know him when he comes,
Not by a crown nor by a gown,
But his coming known shall be,
By the holy harmony
Which his coming makes in thee.
All of us who have encountered Yeshua have had something like this experience. As He said, “My sheep know My voice”.
What does Integrity call for?
I need to widen the remit even further. I shall take my own experiences to do so. I don’t hear Yeshua often (some hear Him regularly, but I don’t) and if anything His voice has lessened for me, over time. Does that mean I’ve lost the Way? I don’t think it does, necessarily. I think He has stepped back, somewhat, because I need to grow up, to stand on my own feet, to develop a direct relationship with G-d / Great Spirit / like Yeshua describes when He said “I do what I see my Heavenly Father do”, and when he told his disciples, that he regarded them finally as friends, not students, and that he had to go, in order for them to find the Holy Spirit direct for themselves.
Does this mean that we won’t need Church or Christianity at all any more? that Yeshua’s work has to be completed by us moving on as free spirits? I think the answer is Yes and No. And what is right for each individual is different. We are at different stages of growth – and here we open up a subject that is no-no to many churches, yet to others (myself included) it belongs to the heart of what our times call for Christianity to open up. Reincarnation Within Christianity. To me, Reincarnation is the only thing that can make sense of people being in such different circumstances, and at such different levels of development, spiritual evolution, understanding, even saintliness. Or else God is just ridiculously unfair and tyrannical, and that does not compute for me.
Research and Listening are essential
I think there should be a faculty, a ministry of Research and Listening, in every church. Effectively, this is already happening – but it’s outside the churches, or at best on the edge. And then there is the problem of Academics, who at best are the most wonderful leaven and inspiration, but can be the worst dogmatists of all. Yeshua was at his rudest about the priestly academics of his time – because they attacked him … didn’t like to listen to him … the Sadducees who didn’t believe in “the resurrection” and the Pharisees who did.
The Sadducees were the materialists, altogether rejecting the idea of an unseen spiritual world; the Pharisees taught the existence of angels and demons in a spiritual realm, but, not actually belonging to a Mystery School, they could get no further than belief: they had no direct experience, no true knowledge.
Room for Mystery
Today we have lost sight of what “the resurrection” meant. I am very sure that it actually points towards the hidden Mystery teachings, in which the reality of reincarnation could be known, and resurrection from a deathlike state, as a spiritual initiation, was taught and practised. But what was regularly practised in Egypt 2000 years earlier, and was even then risky, had become dangerous by Jesus’ time: initiation could go wrong, and the candidate could die or go mad or become an idiot. I believe that the Pharisees had heard about, and believed in, the Mystery teachings, but they only knew secondhand: it was belief, not direct knowledge. Direct knowledge belonged only to the Essenes, who for this very reason stayed hidden, operating in the background.
It was in this context that Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus was shocking to the Pharisees. The mystery schools were supposed to operate in secret: Lazarus was raised in full view of his family and friends.
Now mere “belief” or simplistic “disbelief” in “the resurrection” proves nothing. Here, Scientific Method is today on our side. All mysteries are open to Research, to develop a deepening understanding of “the truth” which is in line with the Holy Spirit, for which another name is Spirit of Truth. The research we can do can operate at many levels of reality. Reincarnation is really an excellent place to start. It is something we can keep wrestling with as a mystery for which, today, there is a lot of evidence.
I haven’t even begun to look at the contributions to humankind of other religions, to consider whether there too we can recognize saints. And I think we must do so – and extend this to our own times in which we find people of no religion per se, who are still saints.
Coming full circle, I believe this essay points to what Qumran did: it was a community where the most traditional religionist priests, and the most far-out esotericists, learned to work together, to prepare for Meshiach, Whom they knew was due to incarnate soon. That’s another story. For now, it’s enough just to keep considering what is most needed, and how we can best answer those needs.
